We evaluate the effects of international outsourcing and labor taxation on wage formation and equilibrium unemployment in dual labor markets. Outsourcing promotes wage dispersion between the high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Higher domestic low-skilled wage tax, higher payroll tax and lower wage tax exemption increase optimal outsourcing. Outsourcing will reduce equilibrium unemployment of low-skilled workers both in the presence and absence of labor taxation. In the presence of outsourcing, wage tax, tax exemption and payroll tax have an ambiguous effect on equilibrium unemployment. Increasing the degree of tax progression decreases the wage rate and increases the demand of low-skilled workers.

Firms in the European countries today have the possibility of choosing from a range of control enhancing mechanisms giving the controlling owners an amount of influence which is disproportional to their share of cash flow. The list of control enhancing mechanisms includes dual class shares, pyramidal ownership structures and several others. The justification for these control enhancing mechanisms is currently the subject of much debate within the European Union. The opposing positions in the debate can be stated briefly as i) the control enhancing mechanisms are an impediment to takeovers and should therefore be removed to improve the market for corporate control. ii) Removing the control enhancing mechanisms reduces the contractual freedom to decide desirable ownership structures. This report investigates whether ownership structures affect firm performance. To do so this study provides a description of the current ownership structures in European countries and the economic outcomes for firms using different ownership structures. The results are presented in the tables below.

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We study the optimal regulation of banking groups ("banks”), taking both minimum capital requirements and legal structure into account. A bank can set up either as one legal unit facing limited liability jointly (branch structure) or as a bank holding company with subsidiaries (subsidiary structure). Banks are exposed to risk from their unobservable asset choices and to exogenous risk from their environment. We show that banks with branches are more prudent in normal times than banks with subsidiaries, but are also less prudent when problems arise. A regulator that observes banks’ exogenous risk should optimally determine both capital requirements and legal structure. If the exogenous risk is private information to banks, it can be optimal to screen banks according to risk by setting capital requirements appropriately, and letting banks choose their legal structure.

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We show that taxation of rents may yield an intergenerational Pareto-improvement in a small open economy provided tax revenues are earmarked to reduce wage taxes. Previous literature has shown that rent taxation benefits current young and future generations, while we show that it also benefits the current old generation when the initially prevailing tax mix is sufficiently skewed towards wage taxation. Rent Taxes, Capitalization, Transitional Dynamics, Labor Supply, Asset Prices.

Using a stochastic overlapping generations model with endogenous labour supply, this paper studies the design and performance of a policy rule for the retirement age in response to fertility and mortality shocks. Two main results are derived: First, to oset a change in the labour force the retirement age should adjust more than proportionally to the fertility change and, second, to be socially desirable the retirement age should be indexed less than proportionally to changes in life expectancy.

The returns to education in self-employment are addressed in four
different specifications of the relationship between log income and
years of schooling. The specifications range from a standard Mincer
equation with a constant percentage increase in income to an additional
year of schooling to the most flexible specification with dummy
variables for the different number of years of schooling split into different
types of education. Based on the more flexible specifications,
important non-linearities and heterogeneity in the returns to education
in self-employment are found. These results are robust across
different estimation methods: OLS; Heckit correction models to handle
sample selection; and IV to deal with the potential endogeneity of years of schooling. Moreover, the results are insensitive to the use
of different sample years, different definitions of self-employment, and
different income measures for the self-employed.

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In financing start-up firms, venture capitalists carefully select among alternative projects, design incentive compatible financial contracts and support portfolio companies with value enhancing managerial advice. This paper considers how venture capitalists can induce self-selection among entrepreneurial firms with different qualities by designing appropriate contracts and offering commercial support. We study the efficiency of the competitive market equilibrium with respect to the level and quality of entrepreneurship and the level of effort by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We also provide comparative statics results with respect to basic preference and technology parameters. Venture capital, entrepreneurship, self-selection, moral hazard.

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In this paper, we show that the welfare implications of immigration which takes place in upturns, and may be partly reversed in downturns, are very different from the implications of immigration usually found in static models. Abstracting from any gains to capital owners and native workers due to complementarities, we find that (especially temporary) immigration may still benefit native workers in a European type of labour market where minimum wages may bind in downturns. However, in the presence of hiring costs, these effects may be reversed. Thus, promoting temporary immigration schemes may lead to adverse consequences if they also increase the costs of hiring foreign labour.

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We study the welfare effects of earnings testing flat-rate old-age benefits in a quantitative overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic labor income risk. In our model economy, even a moderate earnings testing reduces individuals’ expected lifetime utility, whenever other taxes are taken into account. Moreover, it also lowers the realized lifetime utilities of those at the bottom of the lifetime utility distribution. Social security; Retirement; Means-testing

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The paper presents first empirical evidence on the effect of foreign ownership on the union wage premium. Using matched employer-employee data for Denmark, the positive effect of plant-level unionisation on wages is found to vanish in foreign-owned firm. While the estimation establishes a positive wage effect of foreign ownership of between two and four per cent for workers employed in non-unionised firms, the foreign ownership premium is close to zero for workers in highly unionised enterprises. This result might help to understand why trade unions frequently resist foreign take-overs even though the existence of a positive foreign ownership wage premium is widely acknowledged in the literature.

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This paper investigates the empirical consequences for the relationship between skill upgrading and internationalization by decomposing import after country-of-origin and after the end-use of products. I find that the break-down after country-of-origin is of crucial importance, implying that international trade with low-wage countries leads to comprehensive skill upgrading, whereas international trade with high-wage countries leads to skill downgrading in Danish Manufacturing. The empirical literature on skill-upgrading and internationalization has mainly focused on international outsourcing and has to a large extent disregarded import penetration. By splitting import after country-of-origin, this reintroduces import penetration as an important explanation for skill upgrading. skill upgrading, import, country-of-origin, end-use of products

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We study the social interaction of non-smokers and smokers as a sequential game, incorporating insights from social psychology and experimental economics into an economic model. Social norms a®ect human behavior such that non-smokers do not ask smokers to stop smoking and stay with them, even though disutility from smoking exceeds utility from social interaction. Overall, smoking is unduly often accepted when accommodating smoking is the social norm. The introduction of smoking and non-smoking areas does not overcome this speci¯c ine±ciency. We conclude that smoking bans may represent a required (second-best) policy. smoking policy, health, social norms, guilt aversion, social interaction

Under existing welfare arrangements, an increase in life expectancy may pose a serious threat to fiscal sustainability, and it may have dramatic effects on the intergenerational distribution of welfare. This paper finds that such effects may be countered through a policy which links the retirement age to changes in life expectancy. Fiscal Policy, Longevity Adjustment, Ageing, Pensions,Welfare Reform.

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To examine the effects on labor market performance of government tax and enforcement policies, this paper develops an equilibrium model featuring tax evasion, matching frictions, and worker-firm wage bargains. In the wage bargains, workers and firms can agree on the amount of remuneration that should not be reported to the tax authorities. We find that increased taxation actually reduces unemployment, whereas more zealous enforcement has the opposite effect.

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Empirical evidence reveals that unemployment tends to increase property
crime but that it has no effect on violent crime. To explain these facts, we examine a model of criminal gangs and suggest that there is a substitution effect between property crime and violent crime at work. In the model, non-monetary valuation of gang membership is private knowledge. Thus the leaders face a trade-off between less crime per member in large gangs and more crime per member in small gangs. Unemployment increases the relative attractiveness of large and less violent gangs engaging more in property crime. Violence, Crime, Gangs, Unemployment, Identity

While immigration is unlikely to affect the employment of native workers in the long run, employment of immigrants may be associated with significant short-run adjustment costs for native workers as they have to fi nd alternative employment or are temporarily pushed into unemployment. In this paper, we therefore study the impact of immigrants at the workplace on the employment of native co-workers using a rich matched worker-fi rm data set for Denmark. Estimation of a single risk duration model for job spells of native workers shows that job separation rates increase if more immigrants are hired, especially when it comes to immigrants from Eastern Europe and less developed countries (LDCs). Furthermore, in a competing risks duration model, we fi nd that while immigrants from LDCs increase the unemployment risk for native workers, immigrants from Eastern Europe instead increase the job change probability of native workers. Thus, adjustment costs for native workers are more likely in the case where LDC immigrants are hired. Finally, we fi nd that the results only apply for low-skilled native workers.